Colorado Senator Ken Salazar, a Democrat, got angry recently after broadcast journalist and political commentator Rush Limbaugh rightly pointed out that Salazar and other political hacks are preventing America from tapping our vast domestic resources and becoming energy independent, lowering gasoline prices, and creating new high paying jobs. Nor did he like it that Mr. Limbaugh pointed out that Salazar campaigns under the false flag of a moderate but once in office votes with the radical leftists like Reed, Palosi, Boxer, and Obama to keep America dependent on imported oil.

The United States has more oil deposits than the entire Middle East, but liberals don’t want the American people to know that. Just the shale oil in Colorado and parts of Utah that Salazar is keeping us from tapping is enough to make us oil independent and to drive prices down.

“Colorado and Utah have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates combined.

That's not science fiction. Trapped in limestone up to 200 feet thick in the two Rocky Mountain states is enough so-called shale oil to rival OPEC and supply the U.S. for a century.

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., the two biggest U.S. energy companies, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are spending $100 million a year testing new methods to separate the oil from the stone for as little as $30 a barrel.”

That vast supply of domestic oil doesn’t include the massive deposits in ANWR, or off our East and West Coasts or the huge supply of oil in U.S. waters off the Gulf of Mexico. Nor does it include the even more massive deposits of oil in North and South Dakota and Montana. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) conservatively estimates just the Bakken Field reserves at 503 billion barrels.

While Palosi flits around in a taxpayer supplied 757 that burns 150,000 gallons of fuel per round trip from D.C. to California with her family and friends and a crew of 16 to wait on them hand and foot, she, Salazar, Boxer, Reed, Obama and other radical leftists are blocking drilling our vast domestic supply of oil. Their answer to their subjects being stuck with $4.00 plus per gallon gasoline is to raise mandated Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards.

But every study by reputable organizations and the government show that CAFÉ standards cause traffic deaths. A National Research Council report found that the standards implemented in the 1970s and 1980s "probably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993. A Harvard Center for Risk Analysis study found that CAFE standards led to "2,200 to 3,900 additional fatalities to motorists per year. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's 2007 data show a correlation of about 250-500 fatalities per year per MPG.

So, since a Democrat controlled Congress imposed CAFÉ standards in 1975 they have killed more Americans than wars or terrorists have in that same period. Now, their answer to high gasoline prices and our dependence on imported oil is to kill even more Americans. Maybe they think that having fewer living Americans will decrease demand for oil. But probably not, since there is no evidence whatsoever that Salazar, Palosi, Reed, Boxer or Obama has any understanding of the law of supply and demand.

We have plenty of oil. There are huge oil discoveries around the world on a regular basis. We also have more coal than anyone else in the world (about a 200 year supply) and abundant supplies of natural gas. All we need is the political will to replace the radical leftists who are standing in the way of harvesting those assets with politicians who put the good of the country and the people ahead of their radical political agenda.

There is no energy crisis. There is a political crisis. Radical political hacks are manipulating the supply of oil to advance their own agenda. We can drill our way out of this mess if we take care of the political problem.

John Bender is a freelance writer living in Dallas. He is a former staff writer for EtherZone and his columns have appeared in various print and internet publications.